Miser t1_j2zo6rc wrote
It's infuriating that our DOT doesn't seem able to figure out how traffic congestion works. It's really not that hard. There are 35 million people in the metro area, 8 million in the city itself and cars are relatively huge. There will ALWAYS be traffic congestion here to the "maximum tolerable level" by drivers.
During covid that maximum level of pain drivers are willing to suffer actually went up because people were avoiding the subway. So traffic actually got even worse. But it will always be at capacity because there is so much demand the only thing keeping even more people from driving and making more congestion is ironically the traffic itself. You could remove literally every single ride share car tomorrow and briefly traffic would be better, but by next week lots of people that don't drive now would go "oh wow look how easy and traffic free it is out there" and by next week we'd be right back to full capacity congestion again.
Because the demand vastly outweighs the amount the system can tolerate and any car you remove will be replaced by some other driver
actualtext t1_j30x97t wrote
So what are you proposing the DOT do? They aren't in charge of the subways. They can help with dedicate bus lanes but that's about it.
jcliment t1_j310pw7 wrote
Protected bike lines. More of them.
actualtext t1_j31p5j5 wrote
That will provide alternative transit options but I don't believe it will make a meaningful dent in traffic congestion. But it's something the DOT should do regardless.
jcliment t1_j31ppod wrote
Traffic congestion is a problem of induced demand. With more protected bike lanes more people will bike around the areas where they exist and mobility will improve. The remaining car lanes will be congested no matter how small or large the amount.
I lived in NYC for 10 years and all of them i used my bike(s), and all the conversations i had when i encouraged other people to do the same were encountered with fear of biking in the city due to traffic and bike lanes not being safe.
actualtext t1_j31tlpt wrote
Protected bike lanes and more bike lanes in general will lead to more biking. But will it lead to a meaningful decrease in traffic? I'm not talking about eliminating traffic altogether. And emphasis on "meaningful". It's possible that this is all that is within the purview of the DOT. But my point in my original comment that I was trying to illustrate is that the DOT isn't really going to be the department where we see meaningful impact on traffic congestion.
I do think reducing taxis of all sorts would definitely lead to less traffic. That would fall under TLC.
I think more and improved public transit options would lead to more people opting to use it. Increasing tolls into the city would also have an impact. Those would fall under the MTA which falls under the state. The NYC DOT can help here as it pertains to bus lanes.
There's the city ferry system that might also have some impact but I personally think it's a huge waste of money for the amount of people it can take and what we're spending but nonetheless it's a city controlled service.
I think more bike lanes (regardless if they protect them all) will be minimal to the impact the other options will have on traffic congestion.
jcliment t1_j31u1y6 wrote
Again, the congestion is a problem of induced demand. You believe that less taxis will lead to less traffic. How so? And why more bike lanes, which means less people using cars, will not achieve the same results?
actualtext t1_j31vxqx wrote
There are a bunch of taxis that are often idle in the streets or just driving around looking for hails via apps. And they make up a substantial portion of car traffic. Even before the pandemic, there was complaining because the number of taxis increased and was impacting public transit ridership. The city froze the number of TLC licenses because it was actually causing less people to take public transit. This was all pre-pandemic. So yes I do believe that reducing taxis would force more people to take the subway and reduce traffic in the process in a much more meaningful way than bike lanes.
jcliment t1_j31wgpq wrote
Or would encourage people to take their car because there will be "less traffic".
Without meaningful alternatives (more bike lanes, more MTA options) many studies tell us that removing taxis (or any other way of only reducing cars) is not a viable solution.
D14DFF0B t1_j326ibo wrote
- Road diets
- More car-free streets and plazas
- Bus lanes + automated enforcement
- Bike lanes + automated enforcement
- Remove parking for loading zones, Citi Bike docks, trash zones, etc
- Congestion charging and tolling
Basically anything to make driving less pleasant. This will reduce demand.
22thoughts t1_j32t4mk wrote
“Basically anything to make driving less pleasant”-And that’s why drivers say there is a war on cars.
D14DFF0B t1_j32zppt wrote
Good. Cars are destroying the planet and drivers are killing and maiming bikers, pedestrians, and themselves.
22thoughts t1_j33cioz wrote
Cars aren’t going anywhere buddy, they’ve brought mankind pretty far along. We’ll have electric cars before you know it and those will harm the environment less than current ones but for the love of god get off your high horse
gamelord12 t1_j33ri0h wrote
No one is trying to uninvent the car. It just needs to be used far less for jobs that it's bad at; that excessive use is what leads to inefficient spending, climate change, and needless traffic violence and deaths, not to mention congestion.
InfernalTest t1_j32ubpc wrote
reduce demand for people who think like this is more likely the result.....
actualtext t1_j336o5z wrote
Thanks for offering a bunch of answers to my question. I can definitely see idea 6 being perhaps the most impactful followed by idea 3. But they’d all add up and would certainly fall under the purview of the DOT.
yasth t1_j31rudm wrote
The congestion charge is basically an attempt to make it more annoying to travel within an area while not actually making it gridlocked. Of course they are doing that as well.
Other than that they can push for more enforcement and more automated enforcement.
actualtext t1_j31ucae wrote
I thought the MTA was going to be responsible for the toll system and not the DOT.
ctindel t1_j35kcbw wrote
The only true solution would be determining a maximum number of cars we want in manhattan at any point in time and increasing the toll to enter towards infinity as the car count approaches the limit. When people start seeing $50, $100, $500, $1000 whatever tolls they’ll turn around.
It’s a fucking island controlling the number of cars present is very straightforward. Catalina does it to a smaller scale but the idea is the same. All entry points to the island have cameras already so counting the number of cars is easy.
Die-Nacht t1_j33y8vo wrote
Reduce supply. The less space there is for cars, the fewer ppl will drive. Essentially, limit traffic to a few areas, and make most of the city (not just manhattan) traffic-free. That will reduce the number of cars (simple geometry) and alleviate traffic.
This is what they did in Amsterdam in the 70s, and now they barely have any traffic whatsoever. I visited recently, it was crazy. A lot of the city looks just as dense and lively as any random neighborhood in Manhattan or BK yet there's no honking or cars just stuck there not moving. There is traffic, and there are cars, but I never saw a car stuck in traffic.
jabularich t1_j30rsb6 wrote
This is the answer.
kolt54321 t1_j33qku5 wrote
This is not true in outer boroughs.
The reason there is traffic on the belt, 10 times out of 10, is because of a car crash. There is a total of one (!) Highway and when a crash happens all outbound traffic is slowed to a standstill.
Not everyone lives in Manhattan.
Maybe DOT could design more than one highway for 2.2 million people? It would be a start.
cdavidg4 t1_j33t53g wrote
Whose homes do you volunteer for demolition? Yours?
kolt54321 t1_j344y7a wrote
Ocean Parkway is one of the only outbound paths for Brooklyn, travels through over half of Brooklyn, and has a 25mph speed limit.
It's a 6 lane street (in addition to 2 service roads). There's a good amount of potential to turn that into a highway. Leave the service roads at the lower speed limit and have entry points into the the main 6 lanes (highway).
The infrastructure is already there.
cdavidg4 t1_j34ftqs wrote
We can't build an extension of the N/W to LaGuardia due to two blocks of homeowners screaming but you think people won't mind an elevated 6 lane highway down a landmarked roadway? Lol.
kolt54321 t1_j34gxc4 wrote
The 6 lanes are already in use. The only thing that would change are pedestrian crossings.
cdavidg4 t1_j34jdvg wrote
And the cross streets. And any bus routes that cross it.
And of course it's ONLY the pedestrian crossing. Who cares about those pesky poor people walking. Just add bridges and have them go up stairs to cross the freaking street.
kolt54321 t1_j34nnkx wrote
There are no bus routes on the entire stretch, per the city map.
There are significantly more people driving through Ocean Parkway than walking across it - which is serviced better? Those "pesky poor people" live in a multi-million dollar area, you cannot get a house there for under $2M, minimum.
Again, if you took a look at the road, you'd see that walking down and up Ocean Parkway would be completely preserved by the wide sidewalks between the main lanes and service roads. It's only crossing it that will be different.
I say that as someone who bikes and walks more than I ever use a car.
cdavidg4 t1_j34paok wrote
Bus routes across. Do they go up and over? Or do you still have to have the signals for cross traffic? If you need the signals for cross traffic what's the point of this?
And okay, we make Ocean Expressway a thing. It can process a lot more vehicles. Those vehicles get to the Prospect Expressway/Gowanus interchange. Now what? It's already congested. Now there's just more cars sitting around looking at each other in traffic. What an improvement!
kolt54321 t1_j35m2b3 wrote
> Bus routes across. Do they go up and over? Or do you still have to have the signals for cross traffic? If you need the signals for cross traffic what's the point of this?
These are all good questions, and I can't claim to know the perfect answers here, but it seem like ramps to get on/off the highway from the service roads would help. There would still need to be one to cross traffic travelling the other way, and I'm not sure what would be the best way to handle that.
If anything, reducing signals from every block to 3-4 intersections along half of Brooklyn would solve most of these issues too. Not to mention all the fatalities that plagued Ocean Parkway to begin with - now it can be a scenic walk/bike route, without having to worry about cars flying across on every street.
> Those vehicles get to the Prospect Expressway/Gowanus interchange. Now what?
Also a fantastic point. That stretch is congested, but nothing near the amount of time it takes to travel through southern Brooklyn. Getting to the Prospect Expressway takes upwards of 20 minutes alone.
I'm not exactly sure what could be done about that, but it seems like this would be a first step. There's a lot of traffic funneled through Exit 1/Fort Hamilton, and I wonder (as someone who's really not familiar with this stretch) if there's a better way to handle the bottlenecks. It seems lots of trucks go there, but not sure if truck-only hours would do the trick at all.
Key-Recognition-7190 t1_j3492w2 wrote
That's absolutely cute if you think that a major highway going directly through the Neighborhood of gods chosen people is going to happen.
I agree it should happen but we all know it isn't. There's a reason its 25 mph.
kolt54321 t1_j34ad0q wrote
I don't like what you're suggesting. The Jewish people there would love to have an actual highway instead of a 25mph crawl.
It's not even Jewish until like Ave J.
Key-Recognition-7190 t1_j34bq7g wrote
Ocean Parkway is like the Queensblvd of Brooklyn in terms of road fatalities, that is what alluding to regarding the 25 speed limit.
As for the Jewish slant a major throughfair would decimate land value on top of literally slicing the neighborhood in half.
If Ocean parkway becomes Ocean expressway you CANNOT have pedestrian crossings.
kolt54321 t1_j34eu3s wrote
You can definitely have pedestrian crossings. Just have them go over the highway like every other highway out there.
"30 minutes drive into the city" is a powerful attractor. Every single building on Ocean Parkway is an apartment building, not a house.
Key-Recognition-7190 t1_j34fv0t wrote
For bridge crossings to support trucks they would have to be at certain height and to preserve the current street there would need to be many thats expensive but doable ill admit.
However that 30 minutes to Manhattan pitch doesn't hold up to the reality that is the Hellish Fort Hamilton Gowan merge. Also immediate behind the apartments are mostly houses.
kolt54321 t1_j34gu1h wrote
Agreed on both points. I'm just thinking that the bike lanes they have between the main lanes and service roads already solve half the battle.
It could also be spun as avoiding fatalities altogether. It would definitely need investment for the bridges (and restructuring the service road into a ramp) but honestly not much compared to other highways out there.
Die-Nacht t1_j33ymmm wrote
Fewer cars driving into manhattan on said highways would decrease the chances of crashes.
Also, tear down the beltway. Tear down every single urban highway. Watch all that traffic disappear.
kolt54321 t1_j345fvd wrote
The Belt doesn't even go into Manhattan.
Die-Nacht t1_j345uz6 wrote
So? There are likely many cars on the belt trying to get to Manhattan.
It's the central business center of the region. Reducing car demand to it will cause reduced congestion everywhere around it.
kolt54321 t1_j34al16 wrote
So to reduce car demand you suggest... Eliminating roads?
That's the most backwards way to look at it that I can imagine. Why not knock down every residential building in manhattan to reduce rent if you're going down that route?
Die-Nacht t1_j34lhm2 wrote
That wouldn't reduce the rent. It would reduce housing supply, which would reduce how many ppl can live there. And that's a bad thing. This is why rent is so high in NYC: housing supply is artificially kept low.
Reducing road space reduces road supply, which reduces the amount of driving, which in term reduces traffic. Which is a good thing. This is the opposite of "induced demand", which is a well studied phenomena
kolt54321 t1_j34n1i9 wrote
Why would reduced road supply reduce the amount of driving? In transit deserts (there are plenty of them in NYC), you need to drive to get anywhere.
Die-Nacht t1_j34rnav wrote
If you are actually curious, there's a good amount of research on this. Here are some links from several different publications to get you started:
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/03/19/reduced-demand-just-important-induced-demand
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
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